Chapter 18: Ingredient Scan

Pang watched the fight in interest. This Innkeeper was quite weak and clueless compared to the other two, but somehow it made him want to watch over more.

So weak, so weak, but he was trying his best.

Little Pang walked to the side. He found a smooth rock and rested his back there. He lay down on all fours, looking cute as he watched the Innkeeper.

Hopefully, he wouldn’t take too long.

…

[-1 Defense Point]

Huff… huff…

Finn was definitely taking a long time.

His eyes were twitching as he felt pain all over his body. He was drenched in sweat, his jaw clenched, as he guardedly looked at the monsters, especially rabid with bloodlust.

His weapon was weak, and his passive could only do so much. Didn’t he have any useful skills—

His eyebrows rose, remembering that he did, in fact, have an active skill. It wasn’t for combat, but it wasn’t like he had a lot of choices.

“How do you use an active skill?” he asked the panda who was now half-asleep next to a rock.

“…”

“HEY!” he yelled and repeated the question when the spirit flinched.

“Huh? Oh. Just will some energy and utter the words, la~”

He nodded and looked at the monsters.

[Ingredient Scan]

Immediately, his sight changed, as something was overlaid on his vision. He saw different colors over the actual image, though he didn’t know what they actually meant.

The most visible ones were the names, though the names were only in the monsters directly in front of him. The monsters were called ’Brindlejaws’ and they had a term ’Awakened’ underneath them.

He had been wondering what this meant. “What does Awakened mean?”

“The essence of this world, the power of life, can be manipulated,” he said. “Awakened ones should be able to have access to it to some degree.”

“Is this related to my Dormant state?”

“Yes, la,” the Panda said, finally sitting up properly. “I mentioned before that everything with life has the force of essence, but each world can translate it differently.

“Your old world, Earth, translated it to powering human brains, though I’d argue many people didn’t really get this blessing.

“Anyway, this resulted in the species’ absolute domination. Not sure if it’s a good thing though.”

“When you were pulled to this place, your body was probably recalibrated to accept the essence the same way as locals, too,” he said. “However, you still can’t control it as you are now. At best, you have the skills the cosmos gave you, but it’ll be limited since each world has its own power systems.”

Pang looked at the monsters trying to eat him, just a meter away from him. “The monsters are at least awakened level—which is how they’re so strong. It’s practically impossible for you to cause lethal damage just by brute strength, especially with an unranked weapon.”

“…why are you just telling me this?”

“I forgot. It’s been a few thousand years since my last contract, la.”

Finn sighed, just shifting his attention back to the three—no, they were four now—monsters in front of him.

Sadly, the skill had expired already, so he had to spend mana again.

This time, he put his whole attention to using the skill lest he waste any more energy again.

Other than the names, there were also colors.

Some parts of the monsters—as well as the surrounding vegetation—had different parts with different ’colors’ overlaid on them. For example, the monsters’ eyes and other openings were red.

On the other hand, several of the surrounding plants were green. Not all, but most of them were. There were also purples here and there.

“What do the colors in [Ingredient Scan] mean?” he asked the panda, who shrugged his little shoulders.

“I dunno,” he said. And then he felt Finn’s judgmental stare and immediately became defensive. “I only know Inn-related stuff, la! I’m not a Chef Spirit.”

“There’s such a thing? A Chef Spirit, I mean,” he asked, a bit intrigued. The Panda’s response dashed that hope quickly.

“Of course not.”

He decided to just ignore him, and then cursed when the skill expired again. It seemed like it only lasted a minute, which was such a waste of mana, though it wasn’t like he had many skills to spend it on in the first place.

He calmed down and watched the monsters bump their heads on the barrier. If they weren’t prone to attracting more monsters this way, he’d have left them be and just egg them on occasionally.

“One more.”

[Ingredient Scan]

The red ones didn’t have any text attached to explain what they meant, but considering they were densest and most saturated in the eyes and the mouth, he could surmise these were weaknesses. There were also lighter reddish areas on the underbelly, its front joints, and the shoulder blades, as well.

The usual weakness of beasts at the neck was non-existent in this one though. Looking closer (and he could do this thanks to the barrier), it was because its neck had thicker skin.

Anyway, the red areas were the areas he had to target, though considering what the panda had told him, it still wasn’t guaranteed he’d cause any significant damage even if he was accurate.

Before the skill expired again, he hovered over the green colors. He walked over to a random plant within the barrier, standing close enough for text to appear. It was a low bush with soft yellow berries the size of a thumb.

[Sunberry Shrub: A hardy bush bearing small golden berries with a sweet-tart taste. It has mild restorative effects and high nutritional value. Its leaves are bitter if consumed raw, but have stronger restorative effects than its fruits.]

“OH?”

Realizing what ’green’ meant, his cooking-focused attention span quickly shifted and he hurriedly hovered over some more accessible ’greens’ to him.

This time, he looked at one of those bushes with curly pasta-shaped leaves.

[Corlan: A low-growing shrub with pale, green, tubular leaves covered in soft fuzz. When crushed or steeped, it releases a cool, sharp, mint-like taste and acts as a natural disinfectant, making it valuable for healing salves and preventing infection. Often found near damp areas.]

Then…he looked at the ’greens’ on the monsters, which were muted all over the beasts, but they were there.

[Meat of Grindlejaw: Medium-quality protein source. Thick and sinewy red meat, but the meat itself is very tough and rubbery.]

So Green meant ingredients.

Hey. If he just saw them as ingredients, then they suddenly looked a lot less scary.

.

.

And he’s getting hungry.

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